Wool n' Spinning

Dear Spinning Circle,

I’m writing this after a VERY full weekend, and my heart is so full, my cup is filled and I am exhausted. As many of you know, dear Rebecca and her daughter visited me for Knit City Vancouver. We had an absolute blast and they left Wednesday morning with one extra case full of apples and wool (Rebecca will fill you in on The Wool Circle in a couple of weeks).

We packed in way too much but had a great time. I am still recovering but after a hectic start to the Fall, it was a lovely way to welcome Deep Fall as the trees start to turn and Canadian Thanksgiving is right around the corner.

There is much going on this month – I am in the process of catching up and releasing things! Dionne has created another doozy of a Colour Mania Vlog, Rebecca is set to begin boucle but can’t stop talking about Supercoils, and I have finished Module 2 of Breaking a Braid … WHEW! It’s a lot – I’m so excited to share all this knowledge with you to strengthen YOUR spinning practice, inspire and motivate, and looking forward to hearing from you about your needs.

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What’s happening this month ….

We are getting close to that dread time of year where we FALL BACK & we do so at DIFFERENT TIMES from Europe (ugh … but more sleep!?) — watch for announcements about Time Zones over the next couple of months.

Live Stream (Rachel): 11am Pacific Daylight Time

• Tuesday, October 7*
• Tuesday, October 21

The Wool Circle (Rebecca):  11am Pacific Daylight Time

• Tuesday, October 14
• Tuesday, October 28**

*This stream and ALL streams in October will be affected by Australia & New Zealand’s Time Change on October 5 & September 28 respectively.

**This stream will be affected by Europe’s Time Change on October 26; N. America changes time November 2

Don’t we all just love this time of year with all the time changes? There are parts of Chile that started Daylight Savings Time on September 7 but not all so I went with the World Clock Time Zones but please check since we have a few people who tune in from that amazing country, too!

ONWARDS!

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Zoom groups hosted in the community are posted about 15 minutes prior in Slack, #general. Check Google Calendar for more information regarding times (here).

Maker Morning‘s Zoom links are posted the day before via Patreon and on Slack (#general) about 15 mins prior to the start:

• Wednesday, October 8 @ 9am PDT
• Thursday, October 16 @ 9am PDT

Maker Morning is a chance to gather on Zoom and spend some time making together! Bring your spindle, wheel, knitting needles or anything else you’d like to work on!

Onboarding Calls help new and new-ish members navigate ALL THE THINGS! Rebecca will walk you through what you need to know & where to find everything. Links are published the day PRIOR on Patreon.

• Wednesday, October 29 @ 12noon PDT*

*Again, please check your time zone!

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Wool n’ Spinning Radio

Dionne took the role of interviewer this month and asked Rebecca and I series of questions about Knit City! We got into a discussion about wools that blend well with others, and why that might be the case and finished off some speculation about what we will all be working on over the next while.

Listen to Wool n’ Spinning Radio where you listen to your audio podcasts or here. RSS feed for the show is here.

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New for Fall 2025! Teaching, Spinning & More!

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Colour Mania & Colour Maniacs

Dionne will be kicking off Colour Mania with Colour Basics. Trying to figure out where to start when it comes to working with colour and increasing your confidence when you make choices? Tune into the NEW Colour Mania. Available to ALL patrons.

• Continuing with Colour Basics & Blending for Colour | Colour Mania, ep. 2 here
• Introducing Colour & Getting Started | Colour Mania, ep. 1 here

Colour Maniacs BEGINS November 2025 – space is limited. Join our dedicated Zoom groups (Staples, Maniacs & Queries) are here. Want access to ALL the groups? Join the Studious Spinner tier on Patreon.

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The Wool Circle & Spinning Staples

Rebecca has been hard-at-work spinning singles and getting ready to teach us all about Textured Yarns!

• Check out the FREE Trial for The Wool Circle here
• Previous Wool Circles can be found here 
• Spinning Staples (book group) meetings can be found here for members of Staplers 
• All collections are found here (can be individually purchased)
• Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs Syllabus – Textured Yarns (Part IV) here

Textured Yarns Study (Fall 2025) will begin with Corespinning, Supercoils & Variations.

• Intro to Textured Yarns & Corespinning | The Wool Circle, ep. 149 here
• Supercoils | The Wool Circle, ep. 150 here

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The Silk Circle & Breaking a Braid Workshop

To kick off the NEW Spinning Purls teaching content (all previous content is still availble to patrons of the community – to browse the archives, go here), Breaking a Braid will increase your confidence when approaching those incredible hand painted braids of fibre I know we all love! Wondering what a 2-ply spun in a couple of different ways will look like in the finished fabric? Want to explore how a traditional 3-ply is different from a chain-ply? How about different fractals? Let’s talk about ALL that!

This month, we will be preparing the braid for spinning – how I go about breaking it down, exploring the colourway repeat and whether to pre-draft … or not.

• Prepping Braid for Spinning | Breaking a Braid, module 2 here*
• Breaking a Braid: Introduction here*

*note that Spinning Purls workshops will not be available on YouTube and must be watched on Patreon.

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Spinning Staples meet on Thursday, October 9 & 23 @ 12noon Pacific. Zoom links will be posted the day prior on both Patreon and in Slack, within the private #spinning-staples group.

Queries & Explorations meet on Saturday, October 11 & 25 @ 8am Pacific. Zoom links will be posted the day prior on both Patreon and in Slack, within the private #queries group.

Colour Maniacs BEGINS November 2025 – space is limited. Join our dedicated Zoom groups (Staples, Maniacs & Queries) are here. Want access to ALL the groups? Join the Studious Spinner tier on Patreon.

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Comment below if you are looking for a specific link & can’t find it!

Warmly,

Rachel

Dear Spinning Circle,

Whew! It’s been a moment since we Live Streamed! There’s been a lot of life in the last 3 weeks – Rebecca was here & we had a grand time (minus my cold of death). Knit City Vancouver was awesome – listen to our post-recap conversation & look at the photos here!

A lot has been released already this month, please check the Slack Channel #general for updates & links, as well as Ketchup & Pickles (housekeeping) here. This month is PACKED FULL of great info for you all!

Direct YouTube Link here

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YouTube Playlists for Episodes 314 – 324 here

YouTube Playlists for Episodes 303 – 313 here

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Remember that beginning November 2025, Dionne will host a monthly ZOOM group (Colour Maniacs Zoom). This will be available for patrons in the Spinning Staples ZOOM group tier, as well as the Studious Spinner tier, on Patreon. Space will be limited.

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Dionne sat Rebecca & Rachel down to quiz them about Knit City Vancouver 2025. Rebecca & Rachel had spent the weekend exploring the marketplace, meeting with everyone in our community & of course, shopping. We share some of the trends we noticed emerge this year, including maching knitting, crochet (yay!) and more. Lots of fleece talk this month – we fell into a bit of a rabbit hole at the end of the show about a property of wool that Melissa (MellyKnits) and Rachel have been exploring with increasing interest, along with Dionne and her fibre blending experiments, called porosity (skip to ~45 minutes to listen to just this discussion).

Listen to Wool n’ Spinning Radio where you listen to your audio podcasts or here. RSS feed for the show is here.

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There is a lot going on in the community at the moment – please take a moment to read over the Ketchup & Pickles (Housekeeping) post for this month. Please leave comments with questions so that I can help you navigate! Remember that the On-boarding call this month will be Wednesday, October 29 @ 12noon PDT. Check Patreon the day before for links.

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Textured Yarn Spinning

In keeping with our Textured Yarns that our Book Study is currently working through, I decided to grab the rest of the Columbia x Dorset cross from Kingdom Fleece and Fiberworks Advent a few years ago & get it finished! I’d already spun a bunch of it for a sweater & wanted to finish it up:

Kingdom Fleece & Fiberworks Columbia x Dorset roving – Advent 2022 – corespun {Ravelry Project Page here}

Resources:

• Introduction to Textured Yarns & Corespinning | The Wool Circle, here
• Supercoils | The Wool Circle, here
• Corespinning How-To | The Wool Circle, here
• Corespinning Nuances: Plying & Supercoils | The Wool Circle, here
• Corespun & Coils | 51 Yarns SAL, here
• Corespun & Coils PDF | 51 Yarns SAL, here
• Corespun 2-ply | How I Spin, here
• Supercoils | How I Spin, here

Fibre Preparation

Twin Oaks Farm Romney – lock pop & prepping the locks for carding; quite soft & slightly tinged tips {Ravelry Project Page here}

Jacob x Lincoln from Dionne – picking open & carding into smaller batts; super easy to process {Ravelry Project Page here}

Handspinning

Bramble Ridge Haunuii Fog in ‘Hastings Sunrise’ – Lendrum Saxony, 18:1 (very slow for me); broke into 3 piles & pre-drafted for air & loft; eventual 3-ply {Ravelry Project Page here}

Weaving

SweetGeorgia Yarns BFL + Silk ‘Tofino Roadtrip’ {Ravelry Handspun Page here} in Point Twill, {draft shared in Ravelry Project Page here}

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Community Participation

As always, thank you to those who share in the community, uploading photos and thoughts about what you are working on! I appreciate it – it’s my pleasure to be able to share!

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Thank you so much for joining me today!

Until then, Happy Making!